Goodbye 2012, Hello 2013

So we come to the end of another year today and we head into the 9th year of this blog for 2013.

I wish all my readers a happy, peaceful and blessed new year when it comes and hope you will continue to visit, read and comment on my blog next year.

Whatever the year ahead holds for us, may we know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit in all we do.

Apologetics: the Battle for Hearts as well as Minds

There's an interesting guest post on Scot McKnight's blog Jesus Creed from Jeff Cook. You can read it here. Cook makes the point that too often Christian apologists think that all they have to do is win the rational argument against atheists to attract people to the faith. In debates, atheists often seem more persuasive because of the emotional strength of their argument.

Cook suggests it is high time the Christian side considered how important the emotional component of persuading the undecided is. Unless we paint an attractive and desirable portrait of the God we are inviting people to believe in, for most people they won't care how good our rational arguments are.

I think he makes a very valid point.

Merry Christmas

A very merry Christmas to all my blog readers.

This year the words that have been going through my mind over and over again come from the great prologue to John's Gospel (John 1:1-14). There we read these words from verse 14: "The Word became flesh."

In those four words the true meaning of Christmas is captured. John has already identified the "Word" as God, the God who made the world. And this "Word" is the Lord Jesus Christ. The message of Christmas is that in the birth of a baby boy in Bethlehem over two thousand years ago, the God who made and rules over everything - the God of Israel - took on human flesh and became a human being. This is what theologians call "the incarnation". It is because he came that God's plan of redemption could be accomplished. He came to bring reconcilation between God and humankind and thereby reconcilation between all things in heaven and earth.

This is why Christians celebrate his birth every year. Because "He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all, and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall."

From his birth he was one of us in every respect, identifying completely with the poor, the hungry, the helpless and the needy.

And we need him this Christmas as much as we ever did. My prayer is that you will know Christ this Christmas and always. And may God bless you and all those whom you love now and forevermore.

Go Overboard Celebrating Christmas

I agree with Douglas Wilson's article "Go Overboard Celebrating Christmas" in Christianity Today. You can read it here:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2012/december-web-only/go-overboard-celebrating-christmas.html?paging=off

I think he makes a number of good points here. While it is true that there is a lot of stuff associated with the secular Christmas that is perhaps more an excuse for sin than a joyful celebration of the birth of Jesus, the temptation for a certain kind of Christian is to throw the baby out with the bathwater, put on sackcloth and ashes (metaphorically anyway) and seek to turn the celebration into no more than a sombre commemoration and a guilt trip about how messed up the world is around us.

I've always felt there's something strange about claiming to have good news for the world while we go out of our way to show the world that we Christians don't really want to enjoy ourselves too much. All pleasure is sinful after all, right?

The message of the Bible could not be further from this. I think Wilson gets it right when he says:

Do not treat this as a time of introspective penitence. To the extent that you must clean up, do it with the attitude of someone showering and changing clothes, getting ready for the best banquet you have ever been to. This does not include three weeks of meditating on how you are not worthy to go to banquets. Of course you are not. Haven't you heard of grace?

Celebrate the stuff. Use fudge and eggnog and wine and roast beef. Use presents and wrapping paper. Embedded in many of the common complaints you hear about the holidays (consumerism, shopping, gluttony, etc.) are false assumptions about the point of the celebration. You do not prepare for a real celebration of the Incarnation through thirty days of Advent Gnosticism.

Yes exactly! As Wilson concludes, grace is what it's all about. And God's grace in Christ was not a stale mince pie and a lukewarm sausage roll in a cold grey room, it was a sumptuous, lavish banquet with Michelin star cooking, champagne, laughter and song. 

That's why 'tis the season to be jolly as the carol says.

Online and On TV

My wife Laura is disabled, a wheelchair user, and a full-time mother. She has recently written an article for the charity Disabled Parents Network and then was interviewed by for The One Show on BBC1.

You can read her article here: http://disabledparentsnetwork.org.uk/a-new-mums-story/

And, at least in the UK (not sure about the rest of the world) you can watch the TV programme here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01p6rw7/The_One_Show_03_12_2012/

Advent

Happy new year to my readers - new church year that is. Today is Advent Sunday, the beginning of a new church year and the beginning of the traditional season of preparation for Christmas.

How might we mark this season? What does marking advent really mean, beyond putting up an advent calendar and beginning the Christmas countdown.

For me there are two indispensable parts of celebrating and reflecting on advent, which can be summed up as looking back and looking forward. The two activities are not unrelated of course. There is something beneficial in the looking back that helps us look forward more effectively. That is the balancing act involved in keeping advent well.

Looking back each year, we try to imagine how it must have been to be part of Israel in Old Testament times, waiting for the long-promised King and Saviour who would be sent by God, or for the characters in the New Testament stories waiting for the birth, especially Mary and Joseph. Though the events of Christmas are already long in our past, during advent, we somehow try to put ourselves back before the birth of Christ came to catch a sense of the anticipation and longing they must have felt. And so many of our Bible readings look at prophecies concerning the Messiah and our sermons and hymns at this time reflect upon the promised Messiah.

But advent is also about looking forward to Christ's second coming. Just as Old Testament Israel looked forward to the coming of the Messiah that would change the world, the New Testament church looks forward now to the second coming of the Messiah that will end the world as it is and remake it perfectly for eternity. So we also focus on Bible passages, sermons and hymns that look forward to Christ's return in glory.

I hope that this year we will seek to keep the advent season in both ways and prepare for the celebration of Christmas spiritually as we inevitably prepare for it in many practical ways too.